Matt Croydon::Postneo

Day: October 6, 2003

  • Wi-Fi Zone WAP Site: Is it Useful?

    Wi-Fi Networking News notes that The Wi-Fi Alliance has launched a WAP site as a companion to their Wi-Fi Zone program.  The URL for their WAP site is http://wap.wi-fizone.org.

    The site allows users to search for a certified Wi-Fi Zone from their mobile phone.  The interface is quite clunky, but it’s oldskool WAP.  There’s something to be said for the lowest common denominator.  Finding a local Wi-Fi Zone was a little tedious.  Here’s the series of clicks that I had to go through to find local access points: wap.wi-fizone.org -> Search -> United States -> MD -> multipage list of cities to choose from.

    Here’s where the usability of the WAP site begins to approach zero.  I tried several cities in my area and found nothing bust listings for hotels.  I don’t want to go to a hotel for my Wi-Fi.  There are a bajillion Starbucks stores in my area with Wi-Fi.  Every Borders book store in my area has Wi-Fi.  Wi-Fi is all over the place, yet only hotels are listed in the Wi-Fi Zone WAP site.

    Is a business traveler going to cancel his or her hotel reservations just to stay in a hotel that they just found out has Wi-Fi?  I seriously doubt it.  If you’re not helpful to technology-minded folk looking for a hotspot (and willing to pay!), and you’re not all that useful to business travelers, how useful are you?

    I hate to bash, because this site is totally a step in the right direction.

    Note to Wi-Fi Alliance: Get those Starbucks, bookstores, and other spots with Wi-Fi listed in your Wi-Fi Zone program.  You’re probably going to have to convince T-Mobile that a Wi-Fi Zone certification is “A Good Thing.”  Add a ‘search by zip/postal code’ box to your front page.  Speaking of your front page, it’s quite sterile.  Spruce it up a bit.  Think about adding an XHTML-MP site for all those technofolk with a laptop and a Nokia 3650 looking for some commercial Wi-Fi.  Expand.  Make it easier.  Make it better.  Now you’ve got something.

  • Upgrading to Rawdog 1.3

    I recently upgraded Rawdog, my current aggregator of choice, to version 1.3.  I was able to run it at the command prompt (python2 rawdog --update --write) but it wasn’t working as the cron job that I had set up.  The simple answer is that in previous versions, you would produce output with rawdog update write.  Add those dashes in and you’re good to go.

    The config file didn’t look different to me, but I played it safe and appended my feed list to the new config file.

    Overall Rawdog has been treating me well, I’m extremely happy with it.  Thanks are due to Adam Sampson and of course Mark and his amazing dancing feed parser.

  • Chilly Roundup

    It’s definately fall here in the DC Metro area.  Lets warm things up with some links:

    • Atari800 is an emulator for 8 bit Ataris.  The first time I saw BASIC was on the family Atari 800.  The cartridge games were fun, but the games that came on tape and took forever to load were the best.  Well, they ruled when they worked anyway.
    • Russ shares his mobile links.  In OPML too.
    • The Jabber Architecture Blog goes a little deeper into blog syndication with Jabber.  Pub/Sub, baby!
    • Chris Gulker likes SpamAssassin on his Linux desktop.
    • Ingo Rammer‘s latest endevor: Architecture Briefings.  Go read them!
    • Jeremy Zawodny turned his 14 hour TiVO into a 145 hour TiVO.  Rawk!
    • Jim Hughes has a roundup of N-Gage reviews.
    • I’m downloading the Xen demo via BitTorrent.  Just about 200k/s and another great example of legitimate BitTorrent use.

  • Blojsom vs. Roller

    David Czarnecki and Dave Johnson respond to the “Blojsom vs. Roller” question.  The consensus is that Roller is more user friendly while Blojsom is lighter weight.  They’re both quite flexible, just in different ways.

    It boils down to which one fits you best.

  • Lost in Translation

    I saw Lost in Translation today.  I’d give it a solid three to three and a half Thauvin stars.